NEWS
The entrance to the Cincinnati Police Department’s firing range and training facility in Evendale P H OTO : N I C K S WA RT S E L L
Will a Police Firing Range in Lincoln Heights Finally Move? Some residents of Lincoln Heights say living next to a 70-year-old police firing range is traumatic. Now, pressure is growing to move the range to a less-inhabited area. BY N I C K S WA RT S E L L
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licia Franklin’s 4-year-old son is terrified to go outside most days during the daylight hours due to the almost constant sound of gunfire and occasional shouting coming from a location about 500 yards from their Lincoln Heights home. Due to the noise, her oldest son, who is 10, struggles to concentrate on the schoolwork he is doing remotely during the pandemic. Calling law enforcement wouldn’t do any good for Franklin or her neighbors. The police are the ones doing the firing. Since 1947, the Cincinnati Police Department has operated a firing range and training facility at 10139 Spartan Drive, which sits between the municipalities of Evendale, Lincoln Heights
and Woodlawn. On a recent weekday shortly after noon, the fusillade of pops and bangs bounced off the ranch-style houses that line Prairie Avenue in Lincoln Heights and the neat lines of apartments in nearby Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority development Marianna Terrace. “For more than 30 years, I’ve heard these gunshots,” Franklin says. “My kids have to deal with this all day, every day. They can’t just go out and play when they want to. I’m a stay-at-home parent who works from home. I hear these gunshots while I’m on calls all day. This is unfair to the community. It’s time for this gun range to go.”
Residents of Lincoln Heights and the other communities bordering the range have long complained about the noise. But recently, the push to have the site relocated has intensified. The mayors of the three municipalities asked the city in July to close up shop and move somewhere farther from residential areas. Hamilton County Commissioners have offered the city help in moving the gun range, and some Cincinnati City Council members are joining the push to relocate it. Council held a hearing Oct. 6 about the possibility of moving the range. Some council members have even toured a potential alternative location. Cincinnati police indicate they’re open to moving the range if a suitable location can be found. CPD officials say vital training that helps officers respond to situations like the 2018 Fifth Third shooting downtown takes place at the range and it simply can’t be closed. But residents and elected officials in Lincoln Heights, Woodlawn and Evendale say there are numerous reasons the range should be moved — and quickly. University of Cincinnati Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Professor Brian Earl calls the noise from the range so close to residential areas “too much.” Earl says
he took a sound meter on a tour of the area around the range and found noise regularly exceeded 85 decibels — the level at which sound becomes harmful to human ears. “I was able to be an ear witness when I got a tour of the neighborhood,” he says. “We have an acoustic reflex when our ears tell us it’s too much. My ears were doing that.” Earl said he was concerned about the psychological effects of the shooting sounds on young people around the range. Many residents and elected officials have raised concerns about the trauma of hearing gunfire so regularly, saying it likely causes what experts call adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Those experiences contribute to behavioral and learning challenges throughout a person’s lifetime. “If the children can be accustomed to silence, to family laughter, we’ve done something,” Earl says. Princeton City Schools Superintendent Tom Burton has similar concerns. Some of the district’s students live near the range. “Each one of our students deserves an environment that is conducive for learning,” he says. “Our students are hearing gunfire throughout the day. That’s not OK. We know the trauma that
OCTOBER 2020
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